Data Origins

The data set comes from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). This organisation records every instances of natural disasters since 1900 within the EM-DAT database. This comprehensive open source database complies data from various sources; UN agencies, government agencies, research centers, humanitarian organisations, reinsurance companies and world press agencies. For a full list of sources see the EM-DAT website. I chose to download all the information regarding natural disasters between the year 1922 and 2022 totaling 16388 disasters. After looking at the data it was clear that the historic record before 2000 was too sparse to stand up against the quality of data recording conducted by CRED since its inception in 2000. Rather than looking at changes over a century using the historic record I have decided to focus on non historic entries of natural disasters which have occurred since 2000. Natural disaster between the year 2000 and 2022 totals 9505.

Research Questions

Variables

To answer my research questions I am interested in where and when different natural disasters occurred. The following variables are of potential interest in asking these questions:

for further explanation of each variable see the codebook provided by the EM-DATA database

What regions have experienced the most natural disasters since the year 2000? Has this changed over time?